Frisco Blog

Frisco city council member Tim Nelson is back from yearlong deployment to Afghanistan

Tim Nelson, a captain with the U.S. Army Reserve, was a grand marshal in the Frisco Community Parade earlier this month.

Tim Nelson still feels like a newbie politician more than 18 months after being elected to the Frisco City Council.

Within months of taking office last year, he received orders from the U.S. Army Reserve to deploy to Afghanistan. His unit mobilized two weeks before he was eligible to retire from the military.

Nelson, a captain with the 980th Engineer Battalion, spent the past year on the NATO military base in Kandahar. As his unit’s civil engineer, he oversaw construction projects throughout the country, ranging from roads to water crossings to intelligence-gathering sites.

He returned home Nov. 8, just in time to attend a Veterans Day event at Smith Elementary and serve as a grand marshal in the Frisco Community Parade. He has since spent two days at a state conference for elected officials. He’s getting plugged back in to city business. And he’s lining up job interviews.

Returning to civilian life isn’t easy, though.

“It’s a difficult adjustment,” Nelson said. “It’s not possible to be the same person you were before you left.” Click here to read the full story.